Fiction Intensive: Make it Memorable

Creative writing workshops are open admission. Instructors will work with each child at their level. Students will improve and learn new skills, whether they are a beginner or have been writing for years.

Notebook
Pen
Laptop (optional)

A day in the summer writing program consists of writing, reading, discussion time, and critiquing. Students develop close-reading skills as they examine a variety of stories in terms of craft, and continue to explore the elements of craft (such as characterization, plot, dialogue, and setting) through writing exercises. Students develop their most promising pieces into complete stories or chapters and workshop them with their classmates and receive feedback on their work. Students then revise and polish these pieces and present their best work at the public reading at the end of the program.

Kim Henderson (M.F.A. University of Montana) is the author of The Kind of Girl, which won the Seventh Annual Rose Metal Press Short-Short Chapbook Contest and was published in 2013. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Story, Tin House Online, The Southeast Review, The Texas Observer, Catapult, Atticus Review, River Styx, Cutbank, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has won The Southeast Review’s World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest and has received two Honorable Mentions in the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Contest. Before coming to Idyllwild, Kim taught Creative writing and Composition at the University of Montana, and is originally from New Mexico. She has also taught youth writing classes at the Chautauqua Institution. She is currently at work on a short story collection and a novella-in-flash. kimnhenderson.com